Cuba's opening to the world has a problem much closer to home than Donald Trump

Donald Trump's denunciations of Obama's opening to Cuba while on
the presidential campaign trail and his continued insistence on
getting a "better deal" with the long isolated island nation have
stirred worry that the president-elect will halt
or undo Cuba's rapprochement with the US.

It remains unclear what kind of policy toward Cuba Trump will
pursue, but Cuba's work toward expanding its economy and engaging
with the world faces an obstacle that is much closer than
Washington.

Cuba's centrally planned economy has long been stunted by its
relative isolation from the rest of the world, and the country
has relied on its partners to support its citizens.

"The economy of Cuba would've collapsed under its own weight long
ago, as a consequence of population growth and an economy that
couldn't really accommodate that growth, had it not been for the
state-sponsors — first the Soviet Union and then Venezuela — and
now both of those are essentially out of the picture." John Weeks, a professor of geography at the San
Diego State University, said on a recent late-November edition of
the Understanding Latin American Politics
podcast.

Cuba pursued some reforms in the 1990s, when the collapse of the
Soviet Union severed the lifeline of the support that Havana had
received from Moscow for much of the Cold War. With Hugo Chavez's
rise to power in Venezuela in the 2000s, the island nation again
found an ideological and economic partner.

Hugo Chavez, left, with Fidel
Castro.REUTERS

But as Venezuela's own economic woes have plunged it into crisis,
Cuba has once more seen a vital ally fade. Improving relations
with the US helped boost remittances and the tourism sector,
bringing growth of close to 3% on average
between 2011 and 2015, but Cuba's economy is still largely tied
to Venezuela's.

Raul Castro, who took over for his late brother, Fidel, in the
mid-2000s, told Cuba's National Assembly that the country's
economy shrunk 0.9% in 2016. That decline came in
tandem with Venezuela's, and it marked the first time since 1993 that official
figures showed a fall in GDP.

"Restrictions in cash and in the provision of fuel" — which
Venezuela has long provided to Cuba and others in the region —
"worsened in the second half" of the year, Castro said in late December.

"Financial tensions and challenges that might intensify again in
certain circumstances will persist, but we hope that gross
domestic product (GDP) will grow moderately, by around 2 percent
(in 2017)," the Cuban president added.

Mayda
Molina, left, an official of the Institute of the Cuban Civil
Aviation, Eduardo Rodriguez, Cuba's vice minister of Transport,
and Alfredo Cordero, right, president of the Institute of the
Cuban Civil Aviation, attend a news conference in Havana, August
29, 2016.Thomson
Reuters

In his remarks, Castro stressed that the country was "not going, and
will not go, toward capitalism." But he also called for a more welcoming attitude to
foreign investment and for more local production to replace
imports the country could no longer bring in.

But any effort to support the economy with local production or to
expand it with foreign investment is likely to be hamstrung by a
significant and deep-seated issue: Cuba's anemic population
growth.

"So Cuba faces what we might call ... a very certain future of
disaster if something doesn't happen, because the population has
reached a peak of about 11 million. UN demographers project that
it's going to go down," said Weeks, who is the director of the
International Population Center at SDSU.

"The population size is going to go down, because the population
is aging, and the birth rate had been below replacement level for
quite a while," Weeks added.

Cuba's
population has held steady over the last
decade.UN data

Cuba's birthrate fell to about 10 per 1,000 people in 2010, part of a
long-term decline that has continued in the years since.

Moreover, according to UN data, a considerable number of Cubans fall
into the 40- to 55-years old age range, and about one-quarter of
Cubans are older than 55. All of which means the country
is poised to see a considerable number of elderly people in the
coming years, just as declining birthrates draw down the
working-age population.

Paradoxically, Cuba's population problem has to some extent been
exacerbated by improving relations with the US. A wave of
migrants have left the island over the last two years, many of them concerned that preferential
immigration policies toward Cubans arriving the US would end with
a new era of engagement between Washington and Havana.

Cuba has a population
bulge in the 40-to-50 age range.Andy
Kiersz/Business Insider/data via the UN

Cubans who've remained have shifted heavily into the country's
tourism sector, drawn by pay that exceeds the state-controlled
salaries many other industries received.

Some Cubans are optimistic about what's to come, but, despite
the government's piecemeal reforms, young Cubans continue to see
brighter futures elsewhere.

"It's very stagnant here," Bryan Ponce, a 17-year-old accounting
student, told journalist Tim MacGabhann in early 2016.
"My plan is to get out of here as soon as I can, anyway."

"I work 14 hours a day as a porter at a hospital, and I can't do
anything." Gabriel Iglesias, 19, told MacGabhann. "As soon as I can afford to,
I'm leaving Cuba — I don't care where."

A
government run neighborhood clinic in Havana,
Cuba.Franklin Reyes/AP
Photo

With the country's economic contraction, attitudes like that are
sure to persist among Cuba's youth, especially if the Castro
government pursues painful policies in response economic
struggles.

Castro, in his remarks to the National Assembly, said achieving GDP growth in the coming year
would require three steps: "guarantee exports and their opportune
collection, increase national production to substitute imports,
reduce all dispensable expenses and use available resources
rationally and efficiently."

On the first point, as noted by UNC Charlotte professor Greg Weeks,
"opportune collection" is unlikely to be forthcoming from
Venezuela. And "reducing all dispensable expenses" is a phrase
that may suggest unwelcome policies like rationing or other steps
to limit domestic consumption.

"So it's not sure exactly what Raul is going to do, but he's got
to do something," said John Weeks, of SDSU, "because the Cuban
economy and its demographics paint a picture that, unless people
come in, particularly American investors come in and rebuild the
island, it's going to crash."